Factorio Forums

So with the latest change to heat pipes my power went out. After a little bit of panic, some swearing, i eventually got around to redesigning the whole power part of my factory. The goal was to build off the 2x2n optimal layout as best as i could. In order to minimize the heat loss due to long heat pipes, i had to squeeze all the heat exchangers in close to the reactors, and leave just enough room to get the water in. While i was at it, i decided to make it (mostly) blueprint friendly. Each set of 2 reactors, only 5 tiles wide, comes with all the heat exchangers, and turbines it will need. the only manual part would then be the water pipe puzzle.

Please forgive the pipes on the bottom half, was the first attempt. Top part is more OCD friendly. but 14 reactors:
16 heat exchangers per heat pipe: then each group of 8 heat exchangers feeds 14 steam turbines. The only limitation seems to be getting enough water into the silly thing. here at 14 reactors my ending heat pipes are are 520 degrees. I dont think i can make the gap any wider without starting to lose some of the turbines on the end.

one other draw back, it tends to be quite long...

I'm curious why you would want to bring in your water through pipes that need space between the reactors and the heat exchangers as this forces you to use longer heat pipes. If you fed the water in from the outer side of your heat exchangers (between them and the turbines, instead of between them and the reactors) you could shorten the heat pipes by at least a dozen tiles and that would help with your heat fall off over distance. I know your water supply is located closer to your reactors, but using the top section as an example, there is no reason why the water can't flow south through the heat exchangers and the steam flow north to the turbines.

Apart from that, I like how you interweave the exchangers and turbines in order to narrow the spread of heat pipes.

That's how I had it set up originally with the water going in between the heat exchangers and turbines. The issue was my water source was not large enough to supply both halves of the layout. Each water pump is supplying 960/s so the water pipes have a length limit before their throughput diminishes below what is needed to feed the heat exchangers.

I do think next will be terraforming a lake to feed each side and move the exchangers closer.